Fierce_LiNk

Shiiiiiit, this looks fantastic. That black and white mode is an ace addition. Hnnnggggg.

Were there meant to be pictures in the post? If there were, I can't see them. I want to see that Korg.

Sounds like me in real life, tbh.

That's a nice microphone @Happenstance. Is it just connected via USB? Expensive?

Just throwing this out there: French makes no sense. I jokingly started doing some on Duolingo because @Eenuh is doing the French course. I was taking the piss with my awful French accent. I started doing some of the French course and mocking it, just to muck around. But I've stuck with it for a few days, so I'm accidently re-learning French now. Writing it/typing it isn't too terrible, but speaking it?! Fucking hell. So many silent letters. There could be a word 14 letters long but you only pronounce 6 of them. The fuck? I remember why I didn't get on with it at school. Only enjoyed it because I fancied the French teacher.

Lately, I've been in a biiiiig Soundgarden mood. I've decided to put some time into working out the grooves and fills for some of the songs off the Superunknown album. The obvious one to go for was Black Hole Sun. I didn't realise some of the intricacies of the drum work for that track until I sat down and studied it. I'm fairly confident I know all of the song inside out now, as I must've listened to it over a million times now! I've moved onto My Wave, which is one of my favourite songs off that album. Quite neat and deceptively tricky with some of the timing in that track, notably the shift from the second verse into the chorus. It goes from 5/4 then into 4/4 and it sounds quite strange when you listen to just the drum part by itself. There's this one monster fill before the third verse kicks which took a while for me to nail down, but I'm quite pleased that I've got it now. Had a little look at The Day I Tried To Live today briefly. Again, it's quite different and unique. The percussion work adds a lot to the song and it's quite distinctive. I've got the rhythm and groove of this down already, but just need to work on some of the fills and when to throw them in. Alongside this, I've also set myself the target of learning all of the drum parts for the Smashing Pumpkins album "Siamese Dream". Geek USA was a fucking effort, especially some of the fills and again some of the little details in that song, but I'm really pleased with how that's come along. Thinking of just starting my own Grunge band project, haha.

Yeah, that will definitely throw you at first. I found it a little fiddly at the beginning and it took me a few hours to really get to grips with what each button could do and how everything works. Once it's gets going, you will have lots of fun with it. I took a looooot of damage at the beginning, mostly unnecessarily. Not being good enough with dodging and being slow to react to things. I think you'll find the game difficulty ok, it never felt frustratingly difficult and there weren't any difficulty spikes from what I recall. I spent a large part of the game just admiring it on a technical level. It's very well put together, it looks gorgeous and the soundtrack is stunning. It's just a nice game to go through. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Glad you've started this. It's a top game. I found it hard at the beginning, too. You will get a lot better and eventually things will click. The combat is very, very satisfying.

This whole lockdown hasn't really affected my exercise progress because I went down the whole gym route years ago. Must be 8 or so years ago now. Initially I started off with just a few dumbbells, but then bought myself a good adjustable bench. After that, when I realised that if I was going to do this, I may as well do it properly, I bought a set of squat stands and then also purchased a barbell and additional weight plates. Originally, the dumbbells were just meant to supplement my gym progress, but as time went on and my teaching career took off, I found that it was getting much more difficult to even make it into a gym as much as I had wanted to. The downside is that I started off with standard weight plates. A standard barbell can only take so much before it starts to bend, which mine eventually did when my deadlift numbers started to go up. At that point, I had to make the decision to either get a new barbell and know that pretty soon it would give out and I would need to get another one, or to invest in Olympic weights. In the end, I invested in a set of Olympic bumper plates and eventually (slowly) got rid of the standard plates and equipment. When we moved into our house, we converted the garage and I purchased a cage, which I had been eyeing up for years up until that point. One of the requirements for purchasing a house was that it had to have a garage or some sort of area where we could work out. Luckily, we found a house that seemed to tick this box. Believe it or not, we took a measuring tape with us and measured from floor to ceiling in the "potential areas" where this cage could go. The picture is a few years old, but that's mostly what it looks like now in the garage. Since then, we've moved the elliptical trainer to the other side of the garage and my e-drum set is in there on the right. The weight tree at the back is gone and we've invested in a toast rack style weight holder. Also purchase a few small incremental plates and a pair of Olympic dumbbell bars. We got rid of the garage door (which is an up and over door) and went for a set of French doors instead, so you get tons of light in there. The plan was never to get huuuge but to keep my fitness up and keep the routine going. Due to my job being extremely time consuming, I can't make it to the gym 4 or 5 times a week to exercise. So, this was really the best way of keeping that going. With the current state of things as they are in the world, I've been extremely lucky that I can still maintain this structure in my life. I can't imagine not being to lift weights for months...

Those speakers look fine and should be handy for this sort of stuff. With the audio interface, there's such a wide selection out there, but as long as you have one that is stable and isn't going to be a pain to use/keep cutting in and out, you'll be fine. They can get very expensive, depending on the amount of inputs that you need. I have a similar issue as you because I originally was looking at the Scarlett Solo but I'm not sure if that has enough inputs for what I could be doing in the future. It's a fine balancing between going for a cheaper model for now and future-proofing yourself. I would think about what the long-term needs are and look at the cost that way. If you 100% are going to be needing the inputs, I'd go for one of the other options. It's a pain when you've got a piece of technology there and it doesn't do the full job that you need it for. Looking at the cost difference, I'd be tempted to go for the Audio 2 out of those two models. I think there's enough there to justify the extra £30.

I haven't got started with this yet, but I was planning to get a Focusrite Scarlett as my audio interface. Seems quite easy/simple to use and set up, plus it's good a pretty good rep. There are numerous models based on your needs/amount of inputs. After that, you've got a ton of choice with regards to the Digital Audio Workstation (DAW), but I've downloaded the free version of PreSonus Studio One. There are several packages that you can pay for, but the basic version is free and pretty cool from what I've used of it, so far. I desperately want to get the Focusrite so that I can connect my guitar, but I just haven't got the time or the money atm to do it. I think that's all you'd need at this point, alongside a good pair of headphones/speakers/studio monitors. I bought a laptop in December which has the capability to run something like PreSonus, whereas my previous one wouldn't have been able to hack it. So, it's worth checking your computer spec, too.

I'm not sure I want to go to back to the Police Station because that knobhead Tyrant thing will be there!

Back to loving the game now. Just made it out of the sewers and have done a fair bit in the NEST labs area. God, that whole area is a shit scary. I've basically been holding the aim button all the way through this area expecting things to jump out at me. Had one terrifying moment on the way back to the lobby save room by that big plant room area. Opened a door to show two flights of stairs (as in there's one staircase in front of you and then another one that leads from the level above you). Heard one zombie immediately, so aimed and looked around for it. It took its sweet time, but it eventually made its way down one flight of stairs and was now at the top of the staircase coming towards me. Got rid of that one quite quickly. Walked over to it to check if it was dead. Heard some zombie sounds and properly aimed at the thing assuming it was coming back to life. Nope. ANOTHER zombie from the staircase above me (out of view) had obviously carried on walking, stumbled over the guard rail and landed less than a metre from me. Almost got splattered. We both jumped and I can't even describe the sound that I made. It got up off the ground as it had survived the fall (well, survived, I mean it's already dead) but I re-deaded it. Quite enjoyed that sewer section. It was dark as hell though and Leon has a flashilight. I do wish that they had added the option of being able to turn the torch on and off at will. Would've been quite useful in that area as I feel that I must have missed out on quite a few things. Also, is there a way to go back to the Police Station from the sewers? I found a roll of film that obviously needs developing in the dark room...and I'm assuming the labs aren't going to have a dark room? Anyway, game is great again. 10/10

Honestly, I think a better mechanic would've been for him to pop up at certain moments in the game, then chase you until you get a certain area, e.g. a save room. Once his footsteps are gone, you can then proceed. This just felt too brutal and a bit too demoralising, tbh. I wouldn't even say it was tense or terrifying. In fact, it probably had the opposite effect as I then threw caution out of the window and it just become a case of running from save point to save point and checking the map every few seconds to see where I needed to go. The game was really tense up until that point and I was loving it up until the moment the character is introduced. I was definitely going to do a second run once I had finished this, but it'll depend on how the rest of the game goes from here.

The game is fantastic. But, Mr X/The Tyrant/whatever the fuck he is called is a first class knob. Tbh, I find him to be a very annoying mechanic and his introduction in the game has pulled me out of the experience a little bit. It suddenly reminds you that you are playing a game, especially when you try to think of ways of "gaming the system" by losing him. There was one ridiculous instance where the character followed me from one side of the police station to the other. I went into the dark room save room and he was just patrolling the corridor. Literally put the controller down for a good 10/15 minutes and could still hear his footsteps either outside the room, patrolling the corridor or on the staircase/the level above. It's soured the game for me a little and I came close to putting the game down yesterday.

@Eenuh played through this game not too long ago but mistakenly did it on my account. I initially said I was going to do it on her account, she's playing through Red Dead 2, so I ended up doing it on my account and got the easiest platinum I think I'm ever going to get. She did virtually all of the hard work and I got maybe...4 trophies myself? You can imagine her reaction. I played through the game in a week pretty much 100% it myself anyway. It's too fucking fun. Even though there's about a million things to do with the amount of crimes, bases, research tokens, etc, I did them all anyway. I spent so much time swinging around the city to the soundtrack from the best Spider-Man film. Yes, that's right, Into The Spider-Verse. Took so many photos, too. Basically, I loved this game. A few criticisms though. At times, it perhaps tried to do a bit too much. I love this interpretation of the characters. This is my favourite version of Peter Parker and Mary-Jane. A great version of Miles, Aunt May, Fisk and Doctor Octavius, too. I really enjoyed the writing for the game and the cinematic feel to it. A lot to like about it.

I finally got around to finishing this game recently. Took a long-ish break because work got in the way and then this game just ended up slipping down on the list of a million things to do. It's beautiful, fantastic, etc etc. Not enough good things to say about it. Overall, I can't wait for the next one. The combat is absolutely brilliant and was just heaps of fun to play.

Playing through this game in the best/worst possible way: at midnight with every single light off. I've had 2 playthroughs so far and have jumped about a million times already. I'm playing as Leon and I don't know if I can currently stomach playing through this game twice.

I've not read too many of the replies because I'm lazy. But...Resident Evil 4 is overrated beyond belief. I played the Wii version when that came on. Yes, it plays very nicely. Yes, the controls are great. Yes, it has done a lot for the genre. Perhaps too much. It's a very action orientated game and, aside from a section here or there, it doesn't contain the same atmospherics that you find in the earlier games. I loved the opening section for the game but gradually found myself losing interest in it as it went on. Give me my Code Veronica remake and nobody gets hurt.

I had a dream last night that was almost entirely in Dutch. I guess that's a good sign! Up to 105 day streak on Duolingo, so I'm still putting the hours in. Alternating between Dutch and Italian with a little bit of extra Spanish thrown in.

I've grown to like number 1 now. Aside from that, 4,7 and 9 are also quite tasty.

I've never seen it before but...the controller kinda looks like lego hair.

Oh my god. Look at those shoulder buttons. I also hate how uncomfortably close the O button is to the "edge" of the controller. It's horrific. Bwahahaha.

I wasn't initially sold on this, purely because I'm not a fan of the white look. It's almost an invitation and party banner to dirt city. Also not sure about having the face buttons lack colour. Until @Eenuh pointed out to me that you never really look at the controller anyway when playing...which is absolutely right. (still will probably get a coloured one. Red or blue for me) I'll end up getting a Playstation 5 anyway, then get used to the controller, and then forget about this uncertainty anyway. Who's going to give a shit when we're blowing up all kinds of shit in GTA6...

Just round it up/down to 2 decimal places. NieR Replicant ver.1.22